


oil of vitriol

by Indices



Series: (what) a series of long, strange trips (it's been!) [2]
Category: World of Warcraft
Genre: Character Study, Class Issues, Diplomacy, F/F, Non-Linear Narrative, Unrequited Hate, Violent Thoughts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-05
Updated: 2020-08-05
Packaged: 2021-03-05 23:34:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,269
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25683622
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Indices/pseuds/Indices
Summary: Florence Fanshaw had been a carpenter’s daughter.
Series: (what) a series of long, strange trips (it's been!) [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1937956
Comments: 2
Kudos: 6





	oil of vitriol

Florence Fanshaw had been a carpenter’s daughter, and her father before her, a bricklayer’s son. He had been the second son, which is why against the wishes of his parents he had left the family to apprentice when he was young—which is why they had never visited her grandparents until it'd been much too late, until the crickets had stopped singing and the old weathervane had rusted and tipped over and pointed down at her like an accusatory finger, so she had walked all the way back by herself along the overgrown road. 

She thinks this is true. She doesn’t think of their old home often, because in her mind the image is different (clouded over, bisected, like chipped resin) and the difference pierces her through and singes her flesh like the Light’s unmerciful song, as though it means to pull her apart, to draw-and-quarter her. And yet, she thinks this is true.

***

When Evenflare absconds, she is unsurprised. 

The possibility had always been present in her mind, even when the delegation had arrived, each attaché shinier and more whisper-prone than the last—that the one who stood off to the side, a little less shiny than the rest, would be the most or least malleable of the lot. 

So when the orders had come down for Florence to introduce her, she had bitten her tongue and led her around the Undercity, supplying honest answers for each of the inane questions that Evenflare conjured up.

It should have troubled her, when instead of flinching away, the red-haired elf had stopped on a bridge and gazed down mesmerized into the vivid, bubbling green. She hadn’t needed to be told to know that Evenflare had come from nobility—elf or human, she held herself just like any of the puffed-up magistrates back in old Lordaeron, shoulders slightly back and head tilted upwards, into the light. 

But she had also bent to examine things, without regard for her tabard or the state of her uniform. Insignificant things, like cracks in the stone or mold on the walls—she would jot them down in a notepad that she seemed to carry everywhere.

“Culture,” she had said, when asked, “fascinates me.”

It _had_ troubled Florence when, one day, as they passed an abomination patrolling the canals, Evenflare had asked her this:

“Are they… aware?”

“What do you mean?” Florence had replied.

“Well, that was a poor question. Clearly they have reactions. But they were directly controlled under the Lich King, were they not?”

Evenflare had waved a hand, as though swatting an insect. “Now that they are not… what keeps them like this? What I mean is, if one of them wanted to take up baking or, say, harpsichord-playing, would you—that is, Lady Windrunner—let them?”

“That is biologically impossible,” Florence had informed her. “Their higher brain functions have been removed. They are, essentially, capable only of hunger and carnage.”

“I see,” Evenflare had muttered, scratching something in her notepad. “And it _is_ only one brain, isn’t it? Still, I wonder about the former owner. Might they, conceivably, have wished to be dead?” 

Florence had smiled with all her teeth. “That is beyond our knowledge.”

“Hm.” Evenflare had smiled back, in her tight-lipped, evasive way. “Just a bit of anthropological curiosity, I assure you.”

***

So when Evenflare quits the job, when they say she’s joined the Argent Dawn, Florence barely pays it any mind, save for a brief rush of vindication that she had been right about her—that for all her talk of norms and relativism, she had been no different from the humans who had fled from the sight of them, in the end.

When they lose the Undercity, Florence allows herself to mourn. But she does not lose hope, for their people, what they represent and what they could be, are more than a single place.

When _she_ turns her back on them—

***

When Florence had been very young her father had tossed her up into the air for joy, and before the weightlessness had claimed her—she remembers thinking that she could feel the calluses through her sleeves, that they would scrape all the way down to the bone. 

Florence had held her hand next to his larger one, scarred and pitted from years of labor, and asked: _Will mine look like that, one day?_

And he had replied:

_No._ _Not if you don’t want them to._

(She remembers this very clearly.) 

_You can be anything you want, my dear, if you set your mind to it._

Of course he had been lying to her, even if he hadn’t thought of it like that. 

Never mind that they had been to the capital and seen that grand procession through the streets: the trumpets, the polished coin-eyes of the horses, a mirrored gleam to their plumed headpieces. She could almost see her own reflection, Florence had imagined, if it wasn’t for the scattered petals. Those had gotten in her eyes. So it had been with her brows scrunched up that she’d asked why King Terenas was the king, and received in answer only that, hundreds of years ago, his fathers had fought a great battle and won. 

She would never figure out why the fighting of wars was so much more vital than the cutting of boards or the laying of bricks. But this is not the most cutting thing. 

The cutting thing is that, years later, she would find out for herself what her father had really been saying, what his words had meant to soften. That when he was gone and the money ran out—her only real options would be to marry or, with jeers batting about her head, work his trade until she died. 

He had been lying, even if she hadn’t known it, and she knows this very well now: that a lie told in kindness is still a lie.

Her capacity to believe in them, on the other hand, has never stopped astounding her.

***

“There is a concept that I find interesting,” says Evenflare, over a cup of moonberry juice. 

Tasks for the day concluded, they are at Norman’s inn. Not a place Florence would usually frequent, but her attaché had wanted to come, so here they are. After the elf had tried lying down in all of the coffins, and taken notes in that ever-present notepad, she had sat down to sample the fungi the place had to offer. 

(Despite making faces at a goodly number of them, Evenflare had persisted in tasting each at least once.)

And she had insisted on buying Florence something too. (“Please indulge me. I know you don’t need to, but I can’t very well keep you here with nothing to do.”)

“Oh?” Florence asks, from behind her untouched tea. A formality; she could not possibly be less interested in what this hapless, pretentious lackey had to say.

“I’ve mentioned my interests in cults, yes?” Evenflare counts them off on her fingers. “The Cult of the Damned, of Ragnaros, your Cult of the Forgotten Shadow…”

“Right.” Florence nods along easily. “You’ve mentioned.”

“And I’ve alluded to the difficulty of distinguishing cults from ‘true’ religions, so to speak. Oftentimes the difference merely comes down to what is sanctioned by the current authorities.”

Florence makes a noise of acknowledgement.

“Well, there is a certain term that relates to cults and authority.” Evenflare steeples her fingers, looking out over her mug and just barely past Florence’s eyes. “A ‘cult of personality.’ Have you ever heard of it?”

“I don’t believe so,” says Florence, politely. “Ought I have?”

“I suppose not.”

Evenflare actually meets her eyes, for once. They are very green, almost the same shade as the sludge that runs through the canals. When she had been alive, the glow might have made them difficult to meet—but now Florence does so without blinking.

(Absently, she wonders how deep her addiction runs. Even in the Undercity, the misfortune of the Thalassian elves has become widely known—though it does not seem possible for a priest of any kind to have partaken of the fel.

Still, it is none of her concern.)

“The term refers to a regime that propagates an idealized image of their single leader. They can then cement control by passively eliminating dissent.” Despite the directness of her gaze, Evenflare recites this rather monotonously, as though reading aloud from a textbook. “For example—the famed Queen Azshara, of kaldorei legend.”

For a moment, Florence is silent. She fancies she can hear all the sounds of the Undercity in that instant: the slow bubbling of the thick-flowing sludge, the hushed voices that echo through the pipes, the flap of leathery wings unfolding. 

“...And how, exactly, do you believe this to be applicable?”

“Ah, well.” Evenflare spreads her hands, looking down at her plate. Each type of mushroom has been arranged, neatly, in its own small pile. “I only said that I found the concept interesting. Apply it however you see fit.”

She should have torn her mind to shreds, just for that. 

Evenflare may be a priest, but she isn’t _adept_ , and Florence has learned things that no petty chapel in Silvermoon would ever have taught, even before the Scourge had cleaved their city in two. She could make her bring her face down on the upper rim of that tin mug and crack her teeth, or break that pompous nose and watch the blood run down into the red, red juice. Or she could make her pick it up and smash the bottom into her own hand, over and over, waiting for that telltale crunch of bone, until salt tears fell and sank into the decaying table.

“I see,” she says instead, taking a sip of her drink. It’s gone cold. With any luck, her stomach will hold out; otherwise her insides might be flooded, and that would be inconvenient. “Thank you for informing me.”

An offhanded murmur: “It’s no trouble.” 

Evenflare has returned to her mushrooms. 

(Not until later does Florence think that perhaps, in some preposterous way, Evenflare had believed that she was speaking in good faith. That by voicing that nonsense, she could somehow _help_.

The notion is absurd. She understands _nothing_ about them, and as long as she remains alive, that will never, ever change.)

***

This is why she believes: truly believes, in _all_ of it, down to every drop of toxic sludge and every cockroach skittering round the platforms of the city center. 

Because Florence Fanshaw, the carpenter’s daughter who lived along the road that led to Hearthglen, would never have been _permitted_ to be what she is now.

Arthas, oh, Arthas had been the essence of it. The absolute, rotted distillation of the old order, with his hair and his horse and everything handed to him on a silver platter since he’d been old enough to snatch it up. But when he’d swept back through his homeland like a killing wind—no, even before that, when the plague came—how many people had been dying before they ever tasted tainted grain? How many sick and toothless, clothed in rags, starving on the streets with cold air rattling around in their coin-jars? With no titles and no property? How many with no _choice_?

Terenas couldn’t fix that, and neither could the Light, no matter how long she’d knelt down and prayed.

Florence’s father had died in winter, two years before the plague. 

He’d borrowed too much; the bank had sent notice of the foreclosure. And so he had begun working day and night, until the two seemed to make no difference and he would shamble home in the dead hours of the morning, looking at her without really seeing, as though she was made of glass, as though his eyes went straight through her to the wall behind her. 

She’d buried him in a small grave behind the house that would soon no longer be theirs, next to her mother, and said a few words at the funeral, sparsely attended. His family had turned up, and some of his former clients, but she’d known that most of them were too poor to help her even if they offered it. So she had packed his tools and what belongings she could, and set off for Hearthglen.

(The sickness had felt like an eventuality. And when he’d finally died, the corpse’s eyes had looked no different than before.)

***

But now they are free, truly free. Free from hunger and thirst, from sleep and sickness, from all of the senseless constraints of mortality. Free to be _anything_ , to build a future that all can share in. They are forsaken by life and by the living—the Alliance a menace, the Horde a regrettable necessity—and so in turn they forsake the rules of old. There are no lords and no paupers. Only them. 

The Forgotten Shadow may be Florence’s faith, but _this_ is her creed.

Death comes for all, so it seems fitting that in undeath, they are all of them equal. Sylvanas Windrunner had been of nobility, once, but in death it is merely her force of will that marks her out.

The Banshee Queen understands this most of all, Florence ~~thinks~~ knows. As the first to break free, it is her _duty_ to guide them towards that future. She must know herself to be only a means towards that end. 

And as long as she does, Florence tells herself, she will follow her into the dark for as long as it takes.

***

Florence Fanshaw rises into undeath, and is a carpenter’s daughter no more.

**Author's Note:**

> Watch me take my silly OCs and make them overly melodramatic, I guess. (Fanshaw and Evenflare are the same ones as in [this](https://archiveofourown.org/works/25428529/chapters/61670080), although I hesitate to put it them in a series together because the tone is a bit... different.)


End file.
